§240 angels’ language 123
b. Angels’ concepts, from which they speak, arise through wondrous shifts of heaven’s light: 1646 ,
3343 , 3693.
c. In their language, angels can express in a moment more than we can in half an hour in our
language, and this includes things that by nature do not fi t into the words of human language:
1641 , 1642 , 1643 , 1645 , 4609 , 7089.
The language of angels is also full of wisdom, since it flows from the 239
deeper levels of their thought and their deeper thought is wisdom the
way their deeper affection is love. Their love and wisdom unite in speech.
As a result, it is so full of wisdom that they can in a single word express
what we cannot say in a thousand words; and the concepts of their think-
ing can encompass things the like of which we cannot grasp, let alone
articulate. This is why the things that have been heard and seen in heaven
are called inexpressible, such as ear has never heard, nor eye seen.
[ 2 ] I have been granted knowledge of this through experience as well.
At times I have been conveyed into the state in which angels are and have
talked with them in that state. At such times I understood everything,
but when I returned to my original state and therefore into the normal
thought processes of physical consciousness and wanted to recall what I
had heard, I could not. There were a thousand things that would not fi t
into natural ideas and were therefore inexpressible except by subtle shifts
of heavenly light, and not at all, then, in human words.
[ 3 ] The individual ideas of angels that give rise to their words are also
variations in heaven’s light; and the affections that give rise to the sounds
of the words are variations of heaven’s warmth. This is because heaven’s
light is divine truth or wisdom and heaven’s warmth is divine good or
love (see above, §§ 126 – 140 ), and angels receive their affection from
divine love and their thought from divine wisdom.b
Because angels’ language fl ows directly from their affection (since 240
their individual ideas are various forms into which their affections are
apportioned, as noted above in § 236 ), angels can express in a minute
more than we can say in half an hour, and can present in a few words
things that would make many pages of writing. This too has been wit-
nessed to me by a great deal of experience.c
Angels’ individual ideas and the words of their language form a single
whole the way an effi cient cause does with an effect; for what is presented
in the words as an effect is what is resident in the ideas as a cause. This is
why a single word contains so much within itself.
When the details of angels’ thought and the consequent details of
their language are presented in visual form, they look like a subtle wave